


Wheels and Deals

by gracefulally



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-23
Updated: 2006-07-23
Packaged: 2017-10-21 05:59:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracefulally/pseuds/gracefulally
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the dirty work can be a little too rich even for the evilest of lawyer's blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wheels and Deals

I can honestly say that I have never had a dull day while working here at Hell-bound, Evil, and Associates (better known as Wolfram and Hart). However, I have yet to decide whether such a notion should make me truly proud or even happy. Being a successful lawyer was something I certainly could and should grin about. Heck, I know my mama was. Of course, she didn’t need to know the _details_ of my work. As long as I had a story or two, a promotion she could boast, and checks to send, everything was pretty damn peachy back in Small Town, U.S.A.

This was Los Angeles though and I personally had to live with what I’d become. Now, that’s not to say I hated being me. There was no other option than to have a little pride in myself for taking a few steps up the food chain after my rinky-dink youth. No one in my family was or ever had been this successful. I had gladly signed my John Hancock in blood to sell my eternity to something greater and evil. My kids and family were _not_ going to live through the literal hell that I had for nearly twenty years back in Oklahoma.

This career choice _did_ make me disgusted enough on occasion that I considered the possibility of never coming back to Scheme Central and leaving this city. However, where would I be in the life of wheels and deals if I let this shit get to me? So, I just washed away all those thoughts with a good long shower and enough whiskey that theoretically should land my ass beneath the bar for a one day, two night stay at least because, hey, it could be worse. I could be the guy on the other side of the desk with these sick and twisted requests. In reality, at Wolfram and Hart we were just providing our means of wordplay and persuasion as a humble service to the paying public.

Right and Lucifer just simply tripped down a hole to the center of the earth. Lawyers sure do have a knack for the wordy bullshit. At the moment, though, I could feel the need for that Jack and the dreamless sleep creeping up on me.

For the past hour, I had been in a meeting with a potential client and it was about as normal of a meeting as you can get around here. Only, the demon was simply a representative of the potential client and I was never able to get more than an alias out of him. Or her. I couldn't remember which gender was supposed to have the more lavender (as opposed to violet) skin and the client's name he or she had given certainly wasn't biblical or even human.

The conversation had left me a little ruffled. Lack of information just doesn’t bode well when you have the curiosity of a damn Siamese and the demon had definitely been holding something back.

Names aside, the request of demon's client entailed the firm retrieving a very special piece of décor—namely a young woman's head from the neck up—to add to a personal collection. Though it may have been a little crass, I had heard worse in my short time serving as representation and advisement to the demon community. When you work in a place that performs monthly employee sacrifices to appease whatever deity we’re worshiping at the time, you expect the clientèle to be on the up-and-up of the same wavelength.

At Wolfram and Hart, we typically gave into any request as long as the client can pay. This time though, the deal felt a little suspicious. It was as though the demon wanted to hoodwink the firm into some plot of unthinkable design that would hurt us somehow and it was common knowledge that deals which benefit the firm were more to our liking. There had been much emphasis put on striking a done deal and little in the way of what exactly it would finally entail. Furthermore, when I’d learned that the woman in question was a) a seer and b) a girl that my firm had more than it’s fair share of less than amicable dealings with lately, it all made me start to wonder what exactly was afoot here.

For starters, since when was this girl even a seer? The first time I had seen Cordelia Chase was when my former client Russell Winters decided he wanted her for dinner, as in he was a vampire and she was a pretty girl with enough warm red blood coursing through her to provide a tasty meal. Once _that_ little rendezvous had been botched by the Soul Boy and he had sent my client for a flight and tan, she had shown up as his secretary when the thorn in my ass known as Angel Investigations was born.

I had actually thought Glenda from Non-Human Relations was bullshit-ing me when she said the reason why Angel busted into the “underground” auction last week was to stop us from taking the Chase girl's eyes as she was now a seer. Now the whole mess confused the hell out of me.

What was it about this woman that had multiple clients of the firm wanting to maim her beyond recognition? Why did the meat head _always_ show up to save the day? Or the night, as the case maybe.

After consulting Holland we had pitched a deal to the client's rep, but in the end the demon turned it all down when the haggling went no where. The firm simply cost too much. I wasn’t sure what the potential client had been expecting. I suppose things usually worked differently in other dimensions, but this was earth and the goddamn United States of America where one can sue another for making a sarcastic notion about your hair or choice in religion.

Naturally there was nothing this country’s court system could ever do to stop the Senior Partners, but this firm still needed to be “respectable” and that meant there were laws and inquires to avoid with nearly every decision we made. Taking a Los Angeles citizen, removing her head, and crafting the surest of cover-ups was certainly _doable_. However, it was not exactly the cheapest of business transactions and having it done correctly and quietly always cost a hell of a lot more than one might think. There were no pass-muster jobs here. Not even the under-the-table ones. Well, not ones where _my_ ass was on the line anyway. I might be high flying, but I wasn’t stupid.

I had to wonder if this modern head-hunter would go to someone else and if they truly realized the pain they would encounter if Angel ever caught wind. Then there was the fact that someone wanting to put human heads on the wall like they were prized eighteen-point bucks just made my skin crawl. Thankfully I wasn’t a seer.

“Jesse, I need you to get me Merv from surveillance on the line,” I said as upbeat as I could manage into receiver of my desk phone. My eyes closed as I stretched my neck which had tensed in frustration. “I think we’re going to need to keep tabs on my four o’clock that just left.”


End file.
